Good Riddance, "Operation Warp Speed"

Goodbye, Operation Warp Speed, which Trump aides tried to get him to focus on one last time this week and he wouldn’t do it. https://t.co/9KaBcrOLZO

— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) January 15, 2021

According to the research scientists on "Science Friday" the research and development behind the covid-19 vaccine is 2 decades old, and very well established.  Operation Warp Speed had almost nothing to do with developing it in "record time."  It had already been developed, and the scientists knew how to create a covid-19 vaccine using techniques and even vaccines already available.

Trump deserves, to put it plainly, no credit for doing anything right in the crisis which has consumed the nation and is, aside from Trump's lies and fictions, the single most important factor in the panic and despair and insanity at large on the public stage (I still don't think it's THAT large, and maintain my point that people with guns or who just do violence get the attention that makes it seem like the world is on fire*).  All Trump did for the nation on covid is make the situation infinitely worse than it should have been, right down to the complete debacle that is the vaccination program.  Already stories are circulating that people who got one dose may not get a second soon enough to keep the first from being useless.

When the Trump admin announced that the federal government would begin releasing coronavirus vaccine doses held in reserve for second shots, no such reserve existed.

States were anticipating a windfall. https://t.co/xMA2LTfccZ

— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) January 15, 2021

I'm old enough to remember the nationwide polio vaccine campaign.  We know how to do this, but we put clowns and cretins in charge.  Trump deserves to be damned in history just for the clusterfuck that is this vaccine campaign.  Our only good fortune is that he didn't really have anything to do with the creation and production of the vaccine itself.

*The "Green Zone" in D.C. notwithstanding.

The Secret Service is declaring an honest to god Green Zone in downtown Washington D.C. https://t.co/QkbS9Ozjve pic.twitter.com/STss27trtp

— Mark Berman (@markberman) January 15, 2021

Yeah, a real "Green Zone." But D.C. is not the rest of the country. And we do have only one President.

Q: Are you concerned that we don't have enough vaccine in MN for people to get second dose?
Gov. Walz: “I'm not sleeping because of it. Yes. I'm deeply concerned...it's a catastrophe.” He says of the federal government: “Where did they go? Who's going to be prosecuted for this?”

— Tony Webster (@webster) January 15, 2021